For some two decades, Tibor Machan has courageously
defended natural
rights and radical individualism in the most hostile
arenas--university
philosophy departments. Roman Christians had it easier
when they got tossed
to lions. But anyone who has seen Machan speak knows
he's a formidable
gladiator.

With a single deft stroke on page one, Machan seizes
the intellectual
offensive against those who seem to believe that only
laws and bureaucrats
can make life better: "The first point to be noted when
we reflect on this
proliferation of a faith in rendering everything a
public concern is that
the state or government is but a small feature of any
society suitable
for human community... only a totalitarian government
aims to take on every
possible concern of the citizenry."

Machan shines as he exposes embarrassing contradictions
of egalitarianism.
Example: "If welfare and equality are to be primary aims
of law, some people
must necessarily possess a greater power of coercion in
order to force
redistribution of material goods. Political power alone
should be equal
among human beings; yet, striving for other kinds of
equality absolutely
requires political inequality."

I look forward to the day when he spends more time on a
manuscript,
because it can be hard going, and he deserves a much
wider audience. If
you keep plowing through the thickets in this book,
you'll discover rewards
aplenty. I mean really wonderful, blazing insights.
You've got to see him
run circles around the biggest brains the egalitarian,
tax-and-spend welfare
state can throw at us.

Machan shows how you can elegantly rebut the most
seductive appeals
of the welfare state. For example, promises to guarantee
the "positive
freedom" of decent living standards: "positive freedom
can only be secured
via the full protection of the right to negative freedom
[from coercion].
This is because only when the latter is fully secured
are human beings
going to be most willing and able to provide both for
themselves and for
others--including the specially needy--the values for
our lives."

Again and again, Machan adroitly puts adversaries on
the defensive.
For instance: "Instead of accepting the elitist view
that some aspects
of human life (namely, those having to do with the mind,
intellect, or
spirit) are more noble than the rest and so should be
above government
regulation... If business is to be regulated, why not
ballet?"

Machan provides a rigorous moral case for natural
rights, individualism
and capitalism. He picks apart the most revered
adversaries from Ivy League
egalitarians like John Rawls to statist flacks like
Ralph Nader. Machan
doesn't nip at the edges of the welfare state--he takes
a meat ax to it.
This is a thinker who really knows his business.